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Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | VOL. 165, NO. 61 | Thursday November 20, 2008
InDEX
2 · News Digest
4 · Opinion
7 · Lifestyle
12 · Classifieds
14 · Sudoku
16 · Sports
Economic crisis: Christian
Edwards presents a microcosm
of the crash. PAGE 4
Tourney Time: Trojans head to
Puerto Rico to play in three-game
tournament. PAGE 16
Leah Thompson | Daily Trojan
Giving spirit · Reviving an old tradition, a group of USC students
helped serve a Thanksgiving feast to the women of Sunshine Mission.
By rohan
venkataramakrishnan
Daily Trojan
The Greif Center for
Entrepreneurial Studies will host
a New Venture competition for
Trojans with innovative business
ideas, with $60,000 in prizes up for
grabs.
The competition, open to all stu-dents
and faculty, is a reworked ver-sion
of the 4-year-old Business Plan
and Technology Commercialization
Plan competition, but the new pro-gram
has a greater emphasis to-ward
businesses that are ready to
launch as opposed to proposals on
paper.
The competition is divided into
undergraduate and graduate cate-gories,
with $20,000 for each of the
first-place winners and $5,000 for
the runners-up. First-place winners
also get six months of free rent for
their businesses at the Los Angeles
Technology Business Center in
Altadena.
Participants will have to prepare
an executive summary based on
documented research and a care-fully
considered market approach,
with an aim to use the prize money
to start or spur on their business-es.
Kathleen Allen, a Greif Center
professor and the creator of the
competition, said the changes were
New contest
will reward
innovation
New Venture competition
will offer $60,000 in prizes for
business ideas ready to launch.
| see competition, page 3 |
By danielle nisimov
Daily Trojan
USC CalPIRG’s Campus Climate
Challenge, a campuswide initia-tive
to raise awareness about glob-al
warming, hosted its first “Just Say
‘No’ to Plastic” event Wednesday in
Hahn Plaza to educate students
about the negative environmental
impact of plastics.
The event, which took place
all day in front of Tommy Trojan,
aimed to illuminate the heavy use
of plastics in general but also at
USC specifically. Campus Climate
Challenge hung large signs with
statistics about TrojanHospitality’s
rate of plastic bottle distribution —
1.8 million bottles per year, accord-ing
to the group.
The event also focused on educat-ing
students about eco-friendly al-ternatives
to items commonly made
with plastic, such as grocery bags
and water bottles. Campus Climate
Challenge members handed out re-usable
canvas shopping bags donat-ed
by Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods,
along with steel water bottles, to
students who responded to a plas-tics
survey handed out last week.
Shana Rappaport, coordinator of
Campus Climate Challenge and se-nior
majoring in communication,
said she thinks distributing alter-natives
to plastics is crucial because
it sets an example of proactivity.
“My hope with these display
boards [of statistics] was to real-ly
bring it home for USC students,
not just to have it as these big crazy
numbers,” she said. “Instead of just
saying ‘You guys are destroying the
planet’ we’re actually saying, ‘and
here’s something you have to re-duce
that. Here’s a canvas bag, now
that you’ve learned this information
and are thinking about how easy it
is [to use].’”
Nathaniel Anderson, a senior ma-joring
in interactive media, came to
the event to exchange his plastic
bag for a canvas one. Anderson said
he doesn’t like having to waste his
grocery bags, so he already uses to
canvas.
“Generally... I’ll either throw
[plastic bags] away or recycle them,
and it’s a hassle to recycle them, so
I try to bring canvas every time I
shop,” he said.
But many students who attend-ed
the event said they still use plas-tics
indiscriminately, and that after
hearing about their environmen-tal
impact, they plan to cut back on
plastics consumption.
USC CalPIRG offers students alternatives to plastic
Demonstration highlights
the number of plastic bottles
students use, hypes canvas.
| see calpirg, page 14 |
Gregory Ching | Daily Trojan
Bottled up · Campus Climate Challenge, a part of USC CalPIRG, held a demonstration on Wednesday to
encourage students to be proactive in finding alternatives to plastic grocery bags and water bottles.
By juliana appenrodt
Daily Trojan
USC’s occcupational ther-apy
program renewed an
old Thanksgiving tradition
Wednesday by once again help-ing
to feed the Sunshine Mission,
a women’s shelter near campus.
The Sunshine Mission, which
provides emergency shelter and
transitional housing to women in
need of temporary aid, had its last
USC-hosted Thanksgiving dinner
in 2004. For 10 years before that,
students from the program had
visited the shelter.
“It was an annual tradition to
do a Thanksgiving dinner with
them while I was getting my mas-ter’s,”
said Celso Delgado, a doc-torate
student in the occupational
therapy program. “Then I gradu-ated,
came back to get my doctor-ate
and found that tradition had
stopped.”
According to students and
administrators, the adminis-tration
that worked at the mis-sion
between 2004 and 2008 was
unreceptive to the kinds of com-munity-
oriented programs that
allowed the occupational therapy
dinners to happen.
Roxanne Brown, the mission’s
interim director, said the old ad-ministration
cut several programs,
including the Thanksgiving din-ner
tradition. Brown said that the
mission is currently in the midst
of a civil suit against the previous
administration.
“...We had no idea that the com-munity-
supported programs had
been cut,” she said.
Now, Brown is working to get
the center back on its feet, in part
by reinstating many of the pro-grams
that have dissolved in the
last few years.
“Half the board is new and we’re
not looking at the past; we’re look-ing
to the future and we’re back to
getting this place on its feet,” she
said. At Wednesday’s dinner —
which included turkey, mashed
potatoes and lasagna — multi-colored
streamers, balloons and
handmade turkeys made by chil-dren
from the surrounding com-munity
were placed around the
room and on each table.
“The food is delicious and the
decorations are beautiful,” said
Odessa, a Sunshine Mission resi-dent
who asked that her last name
not be used. “We haven’t had any-thing
like this in a long time. We
hope this continues.”
Currently, Brown is working
to recover more than $200,000 in
funding that the mission has lost
in yearly funding, which she said
is making it difficult for the shel-ter
to stay open.
But Brown said she was thrilled
to receive a call from Delgado
asking if the occupational thera-py
students could help with this
year’s Thanksgiving dinner.
All of the food served at the din-ner
was donated by occupational
therapy students and staff, said
Amanda Call, a first-year master’s
student in the program.
The occupational therapy pro-gram
hopes to work on other proj-ects
with the Sunshine Mission in
the future and inform other com-munity
groups that the mission is
in need of help and programming,
she said.
“We’d like to carry on the
Thanksgiving tradition, but we’d
also like to help raise awareness so
that other people in the communi-ty
that worked with [the Sunshine
For women’s shelter, an old tradition brings Thanksgiving a week early
USC occupational therapy
students brought dinner to
residents at Sunshine Mission.
| see mission, page 14 |

Student Newspaper of the University of Southern California Since 1912 | www.dailytrojan.com | VOL. 165, NO. 61 | Thursday November 20, 2008
InDEX
2 · News Digest
4 · Opinion
7 · Lifestyle
12 · Classifieds
14 · Sudoku
16 · Sports
Economic crisis: Christian
Edwards presents a microcosm
of the crash. PAGE 4
Tourney Time: Trojans head to
Puerto Rico to play in three-game
tournament. PAGE 16
Leah Thompson | Daily Trojan
Giving spirit · Reviving an old tradition, a group of USC students
helped serve a Thanksgiving feast to the women of Sunshine Mission.
By rohan
venkataramakrishnan
Daily Trojan
The Greif Center for
Entrepreneurial Studies will host
a New Venture competition for
Trojans with innovative business
ideas, with $60,000 in prizes up for
grabs.
The competition, open to all stu-dents
and faculty, is a reworked ver-sion
of the 4-year-old Business Plan
and Technology Commercialization
Plan competition, but the new pro-gram
has a greater emphasis to-ward
businesses that are ready to
launch as opposed to proposals on
paper.
The competition is divided into
undergraduate and graduate cate-gories,
with $20,000 for each of the
first-place winners and $5,000 for
the runners-up. First-place winners
also get six months of free rent for
their businesses at the Los Angeles
Technology Business Center in
Altadena.
Participants will have to prepare
an executive summary based on
documented research and a care-fully
considered market approach,
with an aim to use the prize money
to start or spur on their business-es.
Kathleen Allen, a Greif Center
professor and the creator of the
competition, said the changes were
New contest
will reward
innovation
New Venture competition
will offer $60,000 in prizes for
business ideas ready to launch.
| see competition, page 3 |
By danielle nisimov
Daily Trojan
USC CalPIRG’s Campus Climate
Challenge, a campuswide initia-tive
to raise awareness about glob-al
warming, hosted its first “Just Say
‘No’ to Plastic” event Wednesday in
Hahn Plaza to educate students
about the negative environmental
impact of plastics.
The event, which took place
all day in front of Tommy Trojan,
aimed to illuminate the heavy use
of plastics in general but also at
USC specifically. Campus Climate
Challenge hung large signs with
statistics about TrojanHospitality’s
rate of plastic bottle distribution —
1.8 million bottles per year, accord-ing
to the group.
The event also focused on educat-ing
students about eco-friendly al-ternatives
to items commonly made
with plastic, such as grocery bags
and water bottles. Campus Climate
Challenge members handed out re-usable
canvas shopping bags donat-ed
by Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods,
along with steel water bottles, to
students who responded to a plas-tics
survey handed out last week.
Shana Rappaport, coordinator of
Campus Climate Challenge and se-nior
majoring in communication,
said she thinks distributing alter-natives
to plastics is crucial because
it sets an example of proactivity.
“My hope with these display
boards [of statistics] was to real-ly
bring it home for USC students,
not just to have it as these big crazy
numbers,” she said. “Instead of just
saying ‘You guys are destroying the
planet’ we’re actually saying, ‘and
here’s something you have to re-duce
that. Here’s a canvas bag, now
that you’ve learned this information
and are thinking about how easy it
is [to use].’”
Nathaniel Anderson, a senior ma-joring
in interactive media, came to
the event to exchange his plastic
bag for a canvas one. Anderson said
he doesn’t like having to waste his
grocery bags, so he already uses to
canvas.
“Generally... I’ll either throw
[plastic bags] away or recycle them,
and it’s a hassle to recycle them, so
I try to bring canvas every time I
shop,” he said.
But many students who attend-ed
the event said they still use plas-tics
indiscriminately, and that after
hearing about their environmen-tal
impact, they plan to cut back on
plastics consumption.
USC CalPIRG offers students alternatives to plastic
Demonstration highlights
the number of plastic bottles
students use, hypes canvas.
| see calpirg, page 14 |
Gregory Ching | Daily Trojan
Bottled up · Campus Climate Challenge, a part of USC CalPIRG, held a demonstration on Wednesday to
encourage students to be proactive in finding alternatives to plastic grocery bags and water bottles.
By juliana appenrodt
Daily Trojan
USC’s occcupational ther-apy
program renewed an
old Thanksgiving tradition
Wednesday by once again help-ing
to feed the Sunshine Mission,
a women’s shelter near campus.
The Sunshine Mission, which
provides emergency shelter and
transitional housing to women in
need of temporary aid, had its last
USC-hosted Thanksgiving dinner
in 2004. For 10 years before that,
students from the program had
visited the shelter.
“It was an annual tradition to
do a Thanksgiving dinner with
them while I was getting my mas-ter’s,”
said Celso Delgado, a doc-torate
student in the occupational
therapy program. “Then I gradu-ated,
came back to get my doctor-ate
and found that tradition had
stopped.”
According to students and
administrators, the adminis-tration
that worked at the mis-sion
between 2004 and 2008 was
unreceptive to the kinds of com-munity-
oriented programs that
allowed the occupational therapy
dinners to happen.
Roxanne Brown, the mission’s
interim director, said the old ad-ministration
cut several programs,
including the Thanksgiving din-ner
tradition. Brown said that the
mission is currently in the midst
of a civil suit against the previous
administration.
“...We had no idea that the com-munity-
supported programs had
been cut,” she said.
Now, Brown is working to get
the center back on its feet, in part
by reinstating many of the pro-grams
that have dissolved in the
last few years.
“Half the board is new and we’re
not looking at the past; we’re look-ing
to the future and we’re back to
getting this place on its feet,” she
said. At Wednesday’s dinner —
which included turkey, mashed
potatoes and lasagna — multi-colored
streamers, balloons and
handmade turkeys made by chil-dren
from the surrounding com-munity
were placed around the
room and on each table.
“The food is delicious and the
decorations are beautiful,” said
Odessa, a Sunshine Mission resi-dent
who asked that her last name
not be used. “We haven’t had any-thing
like this in a long time. We
hope this continues.”
Currently, Brown is working
to recover more than $200,000 in
funding that the mission has lost
in yearly funding, which she said
is making it difficult for the shel-ter
to stay open.
But Brown said she was thrilled
to receive a call from Delgado
asking if the occupational thera-py
students could help with this
year’s Thanksgiving dinner.
All of the food served at the din-ner
was donated by occupational
therapy students and staff, said
Amanda Call, a first-year master’s
student in the program.
The occupational therapy pro-gram
hopes to work on other proj-ects
with the Sunshine Mission in
the future and inform other com-munity
groups that the mission is
in need of help and programming,
she said.
“We’d like to carry on the
Thanksgiving tradition, but we’d
also like to help raise awareness so
that other people in the communi-ty
that worked with [the Sunshine
For women’s shelter, an old tradition brings Thanksgiving a week early
USC occupational therapy
students brought dinner to
residents at Sunshine Mission.
| see mission, page 14 |